Renting a place in Lagos
TL;DR
One dull Saturday night, right in the middle of August, I suddenly got inspiration to start searching for my own place. At the time, I was living in my awesome brother-in-law's spacious flat, a fifteen-minute drive away from my workplace; very convenient. However, I'd been there for a year and counting and it only makes sense that I was considering moving out, after having been accommodated completely free for that long.
House-hunting had always been something that I shied away from because I had zero experience in it and by general opinion, it was guaranteed to be a tedious endeavour. At the top of my mind were the stories of people who got swindled by dubious agents that rented the same space to multiple people. I had also heard/read of stories of agents who took their clients to horrible spaces and still demanded payment for the service at the end of such fruitless endeavours.
According to all my friends who lived in rented spaces that I consulted, the only way to avoid all of these pitfalls was to work with a friend's (trusted) agent. Not a bad idea in itself, but then I had trouble accepting the suggestion that I ignore all the online directories and put all of my hope in one man. I'm like, why stick to the traditional approach of doing this if there are good technology solutions that can help you do it much more efficiently. Enter property listing websites.
- Go with a friend for a trusted second opinion
- If you value your time, shun offline and go online. You don't have to use an agent referred by a friend. Most online listings (at least on Nigeria Property Centre) have legit agents behind them. Doing your hunt online will save you the trouble of visiting unpalatable places, because quality listings contain all the information and pictures that will help you decide if this is even something you want to go inspect.
- My house search took me only two days of inspection and the period from deciding I wanted a place to finding a place was only 8 days. And only because I did not have time to inspect on 6 of those 8 days.
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House-hunting had always been something that I shied away from because I had zero experience in it and by general opinion, it was guaranteed to be a tedious endeavour. At the top of my mind were the stories of people who got swindled by dubious agents that rented the same space to multiple people. I had also heard/read of stories of agents who took their clients to horrible spaces and still demanded payment for the service at the end of such fruitless endeavours.
According to all my friends who lived in rented spaces that I consulted, the only way to avoid all of these pitfalls was to work with a friend's (trusted) agent. Not a bad idea in itself, but then I had trouble accepting the suggestion that I ignore all the online directories and put all of my hope in one man. I'm like, why stick to the traditional approach of doing this if there are good technology solutions that can help you do it much more efficiently. Enter property listing websites.
